Sunday, October 30, 2005

Night of a Thousand Hugs

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" When you call your god, do you get a busy signal? Or worse, one of those obnoxious recorded menus? Like helpers at some PBS fund-raiser, the bored gods are waiting for your call!

We've been talking Halloween this week. Another ancient custom is shown here. That's me on the left, in the Stepford Fighting Wombats mascot costume.

After a few years of attending Wombats High School football games, I discovered that the school had no student willing to serve as mascot. An expensive (and I might say, handsome) mascot costume was rotting in the school's attic.

Up steps my daughter, The Heir, and volunteers to be the Wombat. It's tiring work. In our climate, many fall football games are played in balmy weather.

Tonight, October 30, Stepford is having its annual Halloween Parade. This charming custom is more to keep the kids from egging store windows than to allow tots and their parents to parade in cute outfits. But at any rate, every tot in town shows up for the thing. Usually the Monkey Man does, too.

Tonight I will be the Wombat. I will lead the parade. I will stand at curbside at the end of the route and greet the wealthy, mostly left-wing residents of Stepford and their tots.

I'll get hugged a lot.

And if wearing fur is the price to pay for a thousand hugs from cute tots, that's fine with me.

Please don't hate me because you can't be a Fighting Wombat mascot. Check your local high school. They might need you. I happen to know that the nearby West Rainsburg Fighting Parrots have an opening on their mascot staff.